Covid-19: why vaccine mistrust is growing

[Music] a vaccine is the world's best hope of overcoming the covid19 pandemic more than 20 vaccines are in development globally but as scientists move closer to success possible breakthrough in the development of a coronavirus vaccine there's a problem a growing number of people say they won't take a vaccine i don't want to inject anything like this into my body this is linked to declining trust in scientific experts and political leaders [Music] problems brought into even sharper focus by the pandemic and fueled by a spiraling emphademic anybody who has trusted the president has been lied to and many people like my dad have paid with their life this crisis of trust could have catastrophic consequences so what can be done to rebuild trust in vaccines and to protect the world from future disasters all vaccine advocates need to be more tech savvy we have science and evidence and right and fact on our side [Music] [Music] [Applause] this is the front line in the race to find a covid19 vaccine professor jonathan heaney is one of those leading the charge it has very much been a race against time and sometimes i wish time could stand still the professor has been developing vaccines for over 25 years now we have representatives of those viruses that are closely related to sars1 or sars2 but finding one to fight a virus which has brought the world to its knees feels different i do know people who've had kovid and it's a terrible terrible death it is an agonizing disease this project in cambridge is about to begin clinical human trials and the stakes could not be higher if we don't have a vaccine we'll be stuck in this lifestyle of isolation social distancing masks for a long long time [Music] for a vaccine to immunize populations effectively against covid19 around 70 percent of people need to be willing to take it trust is absolutely critical if only part of the population is on board we're never going to bring this virus to its knees and control this epidemic [Music] but in the rich world especially polls suggest that persuading people to take vaccines may be as difficult as producing them in the first place [Applause] many of these protesters belong to a growing minority who believe a covert 19 vaccine would actually be harmful to their health do i worry about vaccinations this one in particular yes definitely it's been rushed and imposed on us and i you know i want to have my choice and i don't want to inject anything like this into my body and into my children's body some here see a vaccine as part of a wider government conspiracy to exaggerate the dangers of covid19 many of these people have lost trust in their government and we will not give up until we get the truth we are not going to stand for being lied to by our governments by people that we should trust they want us to trust us but we can't trust them the views being expressed here are extreme and belong to a minority the proportion of the global population opposed to vaccines generally is estimated to be well under 10 percent but anti-vaxxers as they're often called are a vocal minority and their views are increasingly influencing broader society distrust can be infectious a poll carried out in america in september found that only 36 of adults said they would take a vaccine when one becomes available with 64 saying they wouldn't take one or weren't sure [Music] in another survey under four-fifths of people in 16 countries responded positively to the idea of taking a covid19 vaccine if proven safe and effective in the context of covid i think empathy is absolutely crucial professor heidi larson is an anthropologist and a leading expert on why significant sections of the global population feel hesitant about vaccines she says a failure to confront the root causes of vaccine hesitancy as she calls it is driving more of these people towards anti-vaccination views the majority of the public that is questioning their hesitant they're anxious these are people who have genuine questions who are open to vaccination but are feeling they're not getting their answers and then migrate more to the more anti-end that seem more acknowledging their concerns endorsing their concerns professor larson argues that one of the historic problems has been a failure by the medical establishment to listen to the concerns of parents who have doubts about inoculating their children a lot of parents feel like they're being judged called names for even asking questions and that's not at all been helpful in trying to support people in their decision making and positive sentiments towards a vaccine it's really fundamentally about trust relational trust breaking news testing has been paused for one of the leading candidates developed by oxford university in september a volunteer from a leading covid19 vaccine trial was admitted to hospital and the project was temporarily halted professor larson says an opportunity was missed to build trust with the public i wish in the news instead of just this is normal process safety events happen we're taking care of it that the voice of a participant said i appreciate the care and the attention that the clinical team gave to me during this uncertain time the message is sent that there is a caring team that they're not just putting vaccines in people to count numbers and get to the perfect vaccine that there is human empathy in this the medical and pharmaceutical professions have been far from immune to missteps during the history of vaccines and this has helped fuel today's climate of vaccine hesitancy and opposition not least the legacy of a british doctor named andrew wakefield in 1998 he published research in a highly respected medical journal claiming there was a link between a measles vaccine and autism wakefield and colleagues altered facts about patients in their studies but his research turned out to be highly compromised studies have shown no connection between the mmr vaccination and autism the journal eventually retracted the research and wakefield was struck off the medical register in the uk in 2010 but many members of the public continue to see wakefield as a credible expert this guy has been set up it's nothing but lies and millions across the world still have reservations about taking the measles vaccine it's symptomatic of a wider decline in trust in traditional experts and governments in rich world countries [Music] [Music] dr jonathan kennedy is an expert in global public health and has investigated the link between trust and government and authorities and hesitancy about vaccines in this class we're going to talk about the question of how to think critically about global health dr kennedy analyzed voting data and surveys on public confidence in vaccines across 14 countries he found a broad pattern where levels of electoral support for populist parties were higher levels of mistrust in vaccines also tended to be higher populist sentiment this distrust of elites and experts isn't just isn't just isolated in politics the forces driving scientific populism are all very similar to those that drive political populism [Applause] dr kennedy argues there's a strong relationship between vaccine hesitancy and political social and economic crisis at a time when trust between people and politicians has been breaking down a number of countries have seen a resurgence of measles how dare you yes you racist it certainly wasn't a coincidence that the uk last summer lost its measles-free status how about that at a time where there was massive conflict over brexit during the covid19 pandemic the response of governments has further decreased trust in public health experts and politicians not least in some countries with populist leaders the test and trace isn't improved significantly it could be a second wave in britain under prime minister boris johnson's leadership public health guidance has changed constantly and confusingly we're constantly working to improve that delivery system buying ppe from around the world creating a sense that the government is failing and incompetent in a huge policy reversal affecting hundreds of thousands of pupils what's more senior political figures have failed to follow their own health guidelines trust in the british government is a reliable source of information about coronavirus fell from 67 in april to 44 in august don't let it dominate you don't be afraid of it in america false information about the virus has flowed from a president whose contempt for truth has done more than anything else to sow distrust in politicians and experts one month ago today president trump said that the coronavirus was quote dying out i've read a lot about hydroxy i happen to think that it has an impact and then i see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute researchers at cornell university analyzed 38 million english language articles about the pandemic they found president trump was the single largest driver of misinformation around kovid 19. this is me and my mom and my dad in new york after i graduated from college for some this has had lethal consequences in june christine urquisa lost her father mark to covet 19. 65 year old mark was a lifelong republican voter and trump supporter from arizona he died after arizona's governor reopened the state encouraged by the president when the governor and the president went um around pushing a reopening strategy and saying to the public it was safe if you didn't have an underlying health condition it was safe to go out resume normal activities my dad listened and thought it was safe mark contracted kovid 19 after visiting a karaoke bar his daughter says placing trust in his political leaders proved a fatal mistake both the president and the governor of arizona are on record through that time downplaying the virus anybody who has trusted the president has been lied to has been misled and many people like my dad have paid with their life as a result while the actions of populist politicians have undermined trust in public health advice and institutions there is another factor which has driven this trend the unprecedented speed at which misinformation can spread in february the world health organization warned of twin dangers a global pandemic but also an infodemic a crisis in accurate public health information these insufferable globalist elitists like bill gates he tells us we need a nationwide shutdown for months this foundation is leading the charge to lower the world's population much of this infidemic is concentrated online social media users who may not hold strong views about particular issues can rapidly be exposed to misleading and extremist content folks i think they're trying to force a vaccine on all of us [Music] neil johnson is a professor of physics at george washington university his research shows how fake news can gain the upper hand in the online battle for hearts and minds what we expected to find was that there'd be a core of communities maybe public health agencies that we're promoting vaccines and establishment health thinking and that around this central strong core there'd be other opinions sort of extremes but that's not what we found we found that that was actually sort of inside out professor johnson's team mapped conversations on facebook about vaccines between 100 million people all over the world they discovered that misinformation was exerting more influence than accurate information in some sense it's almost like a network of trust and if they flipped either way of course they could become red they could become blue and that completely changes the battlefield on this battlefield map red represents facebook pages and members with anti-vaccination views and their spread over time blue represents pages and members with pro-vaccination views while green signifies the all-important groups of people who are undecided the undecided greens are more engaged with the red anti-vaccination clusters than the pro-vaccination blues the reds they are completely entangled with the greens they're not shores the communities of pet lovers parents groups organic blueberry lovers the ones that can tip the balance one way or the other the worry is as we see the greens and the reds entangle what we're really seeing is a beginning of an entanglement of trust away from establishment science trust is the glue because in the end when we trust the community if they happen to start talking about vaccines which is something that i don't ordinarily think about i will follow them in their thinking this entanglement matters research has found that online exposure to recent misinformation about a covid19 vaccine may significantly affect intent to take one and professor johnson believes this kind of content will continue to spread online with the result that anti-vaccination sentiment could become the majority view within a few years red with the concerned greens will rise to essentially dominate that space and it'll be very hard to reverse that so something different needs to be done now social media platforms have increased their efforts to stop the spread of untruths about vaccines and kovid 19. in april facebook put warning labels on about 50 million pieces of content related to the virus the platform partnered with reliable sources like the who and the nhs and in october facebook banned anti-vaccine ads yet campaigners argue the platform isn't going far enough and is failing to take down the majority of harmful content about vaccinations more broadly facebook's own algorithm undermines efforts to stem the tide of the infidemic says fadi kuran from the online political campaign group avaz facebook's algorithm is sabotaging the efforts of the platform to fix the misinformation problem it cares about keeping individuals engaged interested and online sensationalist outrageous content not the cdc guidelines but q anon for example gets more engagement and hence the algorithm pushes it up in your news feed one solution might be to detoxify the algorithm what facebook isn't doing is redesigning its algorithm redesigning its business model to ensure that it's not continuing to amplify this content and this does not mean that the algorithm should be designed to censor content it just means that the algorithm would downgrade instead of putting this malicious content at the top of one's news feed the platform would make sure that it is at the bottom of the news feed social media platforms could save lives they have the power this is a problem that mark zuckerberg and jack dorsey could literally say we're going to solve this right now yet redesigning algorithms and tightening regulations on tech companies is unlikely to get to the root causes of mistrust in vaccines to do that health bodies and experts will need to be proactive about building relationships with the public in person and especially online according to doctors at this pediatric practice in pittsburgh the key to tackling distrust and misinformation is to fight fire with fire hello this is a yucky doctor coming in how are you guys doing today i'm doing okay while it might look like any other children's surgery the kids plus practice has its own in-house video production suite getting messages out to patients constantly and quickly vaccine advocates are online using our voices not the same way we are in the office we're saving lives we're protecting them against myth truths and disinformation that can literally kill people i think all vaccine advocates need to be more tech savvy kids plus routinely post evidence-based videos and information about vaccines on all major social media platforms i'll start things off until we see our questions start rolling in again hello to tick-tock hello to facebook live and this presence allows them to respond to questions from parents and families who feel uninformed and concerned our parents our families are living their entire lives right here on their phones on their tablets on their laptops their desktops if people hear good evidence-based information before they hear the miss and disinformation that miss and disinformation is much less likely to affect them what you are essentially doing is inoculating them against that before it can take root in them these doctors also argue that it's vital to take on the stream of highly organized and targeted viral attacks from anti-vaccine forces the reality of online vaccine advocacy right now is if you post it they will come the anti-vaxxers will find you and they will attack you they want to terrorize providers into silence it's a challenge the practice knows all about together we can prevent cancer in your children in 2017 kids plus released a video promoting an hpv vaccine that prevents cancer and faced a barrage of hostility they attacked our post they attacked our facebook page they attacked the private pages of our families and our patients who defended us on our post they came right after our reputation kidsplus has since created a toolkit for health professionals and built a digital cavalry of global vaccine advocates who can quickly come to the aid of those under fire from anti-vaccine forces now as a vaccine for kovid-19 grows closer kids plus and it's self-styled keyboard crusaders are stealing themselves for a bitter but all-important new fight there's no vaccine yet there's no hurt immunity for covid and look this is what life is like without herd immunity this is what life is like without vaccines past evidence suggests some people could end up taking vaccines after saying they might not but herd immunity to covid19 may require around 70 take-up of a vaccine and just a six percentage point decline in acceptance could endanger this goal and for many alarm bells are ringing we're losing in large part because the anti-vaccine forces are much more passionate and organized than we are there are far fewer of them than there are of us we have science and evidence and right and fact on our side that's how we win hello i'm slovaya chankova the economist healthcare correspondent if you'd like to learn more about the race to develop an effective covet 19 vaccine click on the link opposite thank you for watching and please don't forget to subscribe

Channel: The Economist

Views: 1,731,834

Keywords: The Economist, Economist, Economist Films, Economist Videos, Politics, News, short-documentary, covid 19 vaccine, coronavirus, vaccine, covid-19, coronavirus vaccine, anti-vaxxer, anti vaxxer, anti vaxxers, vaccination, vaccines, vaccine controversies, anti vaccination, are vaccines safe, the truth about vaccines, covid-19 vaccine

Id: 3EK4VRmG3yM

Length: 24min 11sec (1451 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 18 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Aspel]

I'm posting this with no interest in watching a half hour video from The Economist

I feel like "here's why antivaxxers are wrong" is pointless. Most of them aren't going to be convinced. I think Thought Slime has probably provided the most reasonable approach: They engage with the conspiracy theories, point out why they're wrong, but also address the very real concerns that (some people) have and how they're aware of a problem but misunderstanding it.

You don't need a vaccine to chip you to track you. You already willingly allow yourself to get tracked every day.

The people who believe it causes autism are a different matter because why do they even think someone would want to do that and also that's not what causes autism and also autism is not some fucking death sentence anyway.

[u/BuddhistSagan]

https://news.gallup.com/poll/325208/americans-willing-covid-vaccine.aspx